After the Atreides' takeover, Count Fenring returned to the royal court. Lady Margot returned to Wallach IX for a time, raising the unanswerable question of who administered the antidote to the Count during her absence. Perhaps it was provided by Gaius Helen Mohiam or by one of the members of her Bene Gesserit retinue at court. Lady Margot supposedly returned to Wallach IX to visit friends; however, records indicate that she conferred with the Sisterhood over the long-planned seduction of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, rested after her unknown tasks on Rakis and replenished her supply of narcotics and aphrodisiacs.
In late 10191 she rejoined Hasimir at court, and in early 10192 the two were sent as royal envoys to represent the Emperor at the birthday of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Count Fenring had convinced Shaddam IV that they should use this excuse for the Count to maintain the Emperor's hold over the Harkonnens and to insure that there was no confusion over Count Vladimir's debt for the use of Sardaukar support in the destruction of House Atreides. In a plot within a plot, the Count's machinations also insured that Margot would have her opportunity at Feyd-Rautha while the Count distracted Vladimir with veiled and confusing references to the Emperor's suspicions and concerns. While it is not clear that Count Fenring's continuing cooperation was willing, he remained a highly successful accomplice to the Bene Gesserit's regular sampling of gene pools in pursuit of the Kwisatz Haderach. There was urgency to garner the genes of Feyd-Rautha since his violent, greedy, and mercurial nature made his continued survival doubtful. Since he was to have been mated with the daughter that the Lady Jessica willfully refused to produce, the preservation of his heredity for yet another generation was critical and his seduction followed the standard, time-tested routine used successfully in the past.
Lady Margot was more than beguiling enough to draw Feyd-Rautha away from his harem of slave girls. In fact, Feyd-Rautha found the seemingly aloof Margot an irresistible challenge, and he foolishly assumed what he thought-was an active role in their meetings when, in fact, he was both passive and manipulated.
In routine Bene Gesserit fashion, Lady Margot was to do more with Feyd-Rautha than just conceive his child. She was also to implant a posthypnotic command, a word (probably "Uroshnor"), that would render his muscles flaccid should he ever threaten the Bene Gesserit or one of the carriers of genes important to their breeding program. (To his credit, Paul Atreides maintained his independence and refused to use the word in his combat with Feyd-Rautha.)
In 10196, Lady Margot and her Count were allowed to join Shaddam IV's court-in-exile on Salusa Secundus. Until Hasimir died in 10225, Lady Margot remained at his side, her inactivity probably the result of confusion among the Bene Gesserit leadership and an unnamed malady that rendered her barren. She may have assisted her husband in his unsuccessful attempts to plot Shaddam IV's return to the throne. After the Count's death, Lady Margot returned to Wallach IX to teach and to cooperate with the task force studying the Bene Gesserit failure in the Atreides' matter. Her courses frequently involved the use of seduction as a political tool, and she served on a number of committees to select appropriate candidates for special training on Gamont. She often referred to her late husband and his frequent struggles against his primordial prejudices during her various seductions and frequently recalled his remark that he was "more Bene Gesserit than the Bene Gesserit." Unfortunately, Lady Margot's lectures and recorded comments are such that it is not clear if her remarks about her husband were affectionate, sarcastic, or simply informational.
One major question regarding Lady Margot remains: What became of her daughters, particularly the one sired by Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen? A small corpus of apocryphal legends surround the child and its destiny. It is clear, however, that it was never controlled by the Bene Gesserit. As a major portion of their pursuit of the Kwisatz Haderach, the child would have been a critical element in their continued breeding program. However, there is no record anywhere of such an extraordinary female breeder, and the Sisterhood's long string of failures following the rise of House Atreides points to the absence of such a being in their continuing programs.
One interesting account is the legend of a blessed female child among the Bene Tleilax. It is speculated that, despite Emperor Paul's directives, enormous prices were exacted by the Spacing Guild for transporting the shattered remains of Shaddam IV's court to Salusa Secundus, and Shaddam incurred continued debts with the Bene Tleilax and the Ixians in covert attempts to reestablish himself. Lady Margot's valuable three-year-old daughter may have sufficed as payment to the Bene Tleilax. The existence of such a female child would coincide with the legends of a "mater matrix" that began to develop among the Bene Tleilax in the early 10200s, a woman who contributed astoundingly virile heredity to their genetic machinations. Indeed, the evolving legend of a parthenogenetically reproduced female of enormous power living on Tleilax persists well through the reign of the God Emperor Leto II. These tales, undoubtedly exaggerated over the ages, tell of her breeding with the ghola Hayt and subsequent Duncan Idaho gholas, her planned union with the young Leto II, and most intriguingly, her direct identification with or relation to the Ixian production of Hwi Noree, the beloved of Leto II. If Hwi Noree was the parthenogenetic duplicate of the child of Lady Margot Fenring and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, then she was an androgynous half of the union that the Bene Gesserit had tried to create in the late 10100s via Harkonnen and Atreides children. Hwi's attraction to Leto II may be explained as the fascination of meeting face-to-face an ancestor 3,600 years old. Of equal significance is the possibility that these genes had also been introduced into the last Duncan Idaho ghola, making Leto II's antagonist in the final days also a part of himself. Such a theory is highly conjectural, but it does rise the fascinating possibility that the seemingly invincible Leto II was confronting significant portions of himself in Hwi Noree and Duncan-the-Last.
Contemporary rumors that Sister Quintinius Violet Chenoeh was a descendant of this daughter have no validity and should be discounted.
R.C.S.
Further references: Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Count Fenring: A Profile Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 243; Lady Margot Fenring, Arrakis and After, Arrakis Studies 12 (Grumman: United Worlds); Lors Karden, Truth and Fancy in the Oral History (Yorba: Rose).
FILTPLUG
A small, tubular device used on Arrakis to help prevent loss of body moisture. Many examples have been uncovered in different sietches. All are made of a spice-based compound, with silicon and orthatan added in varying proportions. There is a high correlation between the proportions of additives and the locations where the plugs were found; differences in composition appear to have been a matter of local preference.
Most filtplugs were about 25 mm long, with each branch of the Y-shaped device between 5 and 7 mm in diameter. The single outlet at the bottom fitted the upper end of a stillsuit's primary catchtube. Each upper branch of the Y slipped into one nostril. The outside surface of the fitted ends was roughened slightly so the seal would be snug. The roughness caused sores at first and eventually left calluses around the nostrils of constant users. The filtplug directed all the air exhaled from the lungs, with its moisture, into the stillsuit's recovery system.
Filtplugs had screen filters of moderate mesh built into each of the Y branches. They captured significant particulates, keeping them from fouling the distillation apparatus. If one filter clogged, the wearer could still exhale through one nostril. Filtplugs could be cleared in the field by pulling them from the nose and the catchtube and blowing backwards through the air passage. Usually, however, both filter-cleaning and the substitution of a new filtplug for a used one were carried out before leaving or after returning to the sietch.
FISH SPEAKERS, ORIGINS OF
The existence of the Fish Speakers, and especially of their religious and military devotion, can be best explained by the significance of fish: a divine life symbol from antiquity. Which species became the dominant symbol is disputed. According to Fish Speaker legend, the sandtrout so important in Dune histo
ry is a relict form of a now-extinct lungfish, but trout are very similar to salmon, and the Legend of the Silver Salmon — a large fish with oracular powers and a reputation for escaping all nets and lures — persisted in Fremen culture despite the absence of water. Some investigators believe that the legend may have been imported from Caladan, where the appearance of the Golden Carp was said to predict a time when the planet would be destroyed by a vast flood, and only those who believed in the Golden Carp would survive. Yet, as a divine life symbol in many cultures, the Vesica Piscis was an oval figure pointed at both ends and representing the air bladder of the fish. This, of course, throws all speculation in another direction, for sandtrout and lungfish are both too elongated to authenticate this symbol. The butterfly fish, Pisces Omatissimus, fits the rounded appearance that the symbol demands; moreover, its distinctive markings assure that no two like fishes can be found. Its brilliant colors of gold and orange with silver horizontal stripes make it an entertaining spectacle; and, though it is not predatory, its armor gives it a militaristic appearance. It feeds on a legumous water plant called Arakis.
A silver fish was once worn by members of a secret society called Aram-el, but was abandoned in order to conciliate a powerful rival organization that was jealous of the fish's use as an emblem. Aram-el's need to defend itself gave rise to a military faction which gradually absorbed other groups and grew to become the Fish Speakers. The first leader of this group had a series of dreams in which one such silver emblem grew large and lifelike and began to speak, warning of future trials and cautioning the leadership to develop military prowess for religious purposes, although these were at first obscure. It was the second generation leader to whom was revealed that the purpose of Aram-el was to defend a god-king. Thereafter members being initiated into Aram-el took their vows by placing their hands upon a large silver fish, and the most religious of the group secretly reverenced the same object as a fetish. No wonder that this fish spoke to them in dreams, and the more devout could verify their sincerity by reports of those dreams.
As time-passed, other rituals and more precise vows replaced these early forms, but the military women who protect and defend the God-king were thereafter known as Fish Speakers and became Brides of the God-King, in preparation of that day when such a visitation would occur.
The above material, taken almost verbatim from the Official History, represents the received version of the origins of the Fish Speakers, and is as noteworthy for its omissions as for its inclusions. Primarily, it does not address the questions of why such an organization was necessary in the first place, and of what happened to those organizations it replaced. Answers to such questions are nowhere to be found in the Official History, and what follows has been pieced together from fragmentary evidence in those parts of the Rakis Hoard that have thus far been uncovered and translated.
The Fish Speakers were formed in response to a military necessity, not as the result of an upwelling of religious fervor. Their foundation was preceded by events covering almost a hundred years, events that fall into three phases: the disbanding of the Fedaykin, the decline of the Fremen soldiery, and the revolt of the Fremen.
THE DISBANDING OF THE FEDAYKIN.. The first step leading to the establishment of the Fish Speakers as a military force came in the regency of Alia. In 10210, Alia brought about the dissolution of the Fedaykin by various legal strategems, and within a year or two afterwards, Paul's elite force no longer existed as a military organization. The Fedaykin were never a very large group, consisting of perhaps 50,000 men at its maximum, but their effectiveness was all out of proportion to their numbers. They provided the spearhead of many campaigns and furnished an experienced cadre around which later battle groups were formed. By disbanding them, Alia sought to forestall the possibility of a military hero's winning popular support and challenging the rule she exercised through her priesthood and civil bureaucracy. The harvest of her labor was reaped by Leto II.
THE DECLINE OF THE FREMEN. The decline of the military might of the Fremen army took a much longer time, was marked by no notorious single incident, and was hidden from view by official decision. Hence its story has only recently come to light, and has been pieced together by the patient researchers of the military section, of the Library Confraternity, to whose efforts we owe these startling revelations about the true reasons for the formation of the Fish Speakers.
The first bit of information to move speculation in this area came not from the Rakis Hoard, but from the Bureau of Personnel of the Padishah Empire, housed on Kaitain. In its administration of personnel rotation, the Sardaukar Imperial Staff employed a system of flagging personnel records with differently colored tabs, according to the reason for the transfer, A red tab marked the record of one who had died in combat off-world, and whose remains were being returned; black indicated an off-world non-combat death from disease or accident; yellow marked the record of one transferred home for medical recuperation; green marked transfers for administrative and general reasons.
When the Fremen were organized under the Atreides, the system of the Sardaukar was borrowed. With this knowledge, the summaries of military personnel transfers found on Rakis became clear. The following table shows percentages of transfers for different reasons through the hundred-year period following the end of Paul's Jihad.
The changes on the table are instructive: the 4% combat deaths in the years 10211 to 10220 shows, no doubt, the mopping up of outlying pockets of resistance where the battle continued in diminished form. But after forty years during which combat deaths comprised less than one percent of the record transfers, the percentage begins to inch upward, to 2% and 3% of the total from 10271 to 10310. Two possible reasons have been suggested for this increase, neither of them flattering to Fremen honor: either resistance cells were being formed and operating, the suppression of which was producing Fremen battle casualties, or, perhaps more likely, accidental deaths were being falsified as military deaths to lend a spurious luster to the reputations of the deceased.
The percentage of black-tabbed records, showing death from accident or disease, is higher than any commander would wish, but not surprising in view of the high degree of adaptation to the conditions of Arrakis which the Fremen had achieved. When sent to planets with grossly divergent climatic and social environments, many of the Fremen simply did not adjust well. These records have not been examined in any detail, but spot checks over the century have shown that many of these deaths, in the early decades at least, were attributable to drowning, general edemas, and surprisingly, heat exhaustion. (The Fremen metabolism sometimes reacted in unexpected ways to conditions of high humidity.)
As the foregoing implies, disease was taking a heavy toll. The yellow tabs, marking transfers for recuperation, increased enormously in percentage over the period — from 8% of the total in 10220 to 28% of the total in 10310. And it must be kept in mind that these figures show only those sick enough to warrant transfer home: those with lesser degrees of incapacity would be treated on the garrisoned planet. An astonishing picture appears then in the first decade of the 103rd century: many of the Fremen garrisons must have had sick calls amounting to nearly a third of their total force! Such units could not have fielded an effective force. But this decline in the vigor of the Fremen (and such indeed is what it seems) dovetails well with what we know was happening back on Arrakis, as the planetary conditions changed and the Fremen approached the degenerate state of the later Museum Fremen.
Various other arguments support this conclusion: we know, for example, that Fremen tribal membership was extended to children born off-world who were acknowledged by Fremen soldiers. The first such recognition on the planet Zimaona occurred in 10214 (only the rolls for Zimaona have yet been located among the ridulian crystals). The number of acknowledgments and children born of legal marriages to Zimaonian natives increases steadily over the next twenty years, and it is among the transfer records from Zimaona that we see for the first time, beginning in 10233, folders with a beige t
ab, showing that the soldier in question refused return to Arrakis and was mustered out on the planet. The use of the beige tab was an innovation restricted to Zimaona and suppressed even there after just two years. It may be that the beige tabs were having a destructive effect on morale — 6,000 soldiers refused return in those two years — and the folders of those who ended their enlistments on Zimaona returned to the use of the green tab specified for general purposes elsewhere throughout the empire. The total number of Fremen who refused return to Arrakis, therefore, is buried in the mass of general transfer records, but their numbers are hinted at in the two-year innovation of Zimaona.
Rakis Reference Catalog 3-M530 provides another revealing insight into the decline of the Fremen soldiery. The conquest of Carillon during Paul Muad'Dib's Jihad was one of the more protracted and difficult ones, taking eighteen months before the main resistance was crushed. The Rakis Finds crystal numbered 3-M530 includes the Table of Organization and Equipment for the Fremen forces at the close of the first year of the campaign, when they had reached their maximum of about 250,000 men. According to the TOE, roughly 25,000 of these were support personnel: supply, medical, military government, and the like. This ratio of support troops to combat troops — 1 to 9 — was unbelievable to their enemies and unprecedented in military history. The Sardaukar at their most efficient, say at the end of the 7000s with millennia of experience behind them and no challenge to their supremacy, never achieved a better ratio of support to combatants than 3 to 1.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 48
